neighbourhood: in the street

I used to see " To Let" signs for houses/buildings etc. as we drove through my home city, and winge at my parents that I need to go to the toilet. I didn't understand that these were'nt really giant toilet signs until I was about 11.

My dad used to tell me that if I didn't lift up my feet at the end of the escalator, I'd get sucked in, because I'd always be playing on the steps as we went up or down. I still have never stood still when I got to the end, I know I won't get sucked up but I don't wanna risk it.

I used to believe I made street lights blink out when I went by them because it happened so frequently. It came up in a car-ride one time with my Dad as we drove by one that went out, he looked at me and said "I did that." I couldn't believe it, I had inherited the supernatural vibes from my Dad! It still happens to us this day. <insert soundtrack from Encounters of the Third Kind here>

One time me and my sister were walking around downtown and we were going into dance costume shops and we looked through the window of one of the stores and we saw little frilly costume things. So we decided to go in and look around. After about a minute or two of being in there I realized what it was! I told my sister that we were in a lingerie store and we hurry and ran out. We were like 11 and 13 or something like that. Turns out after we walked out we saw the name of the store and it was called "Dirty Joe's Punsters" it was so gross.

Everyday in my town at 6:45 a horn would sound. my mom told me it meant that all children had to be in bed or else. I would always run to bed.

Whenever I would travel with my parents I noticed the signs that had JCT on them. I thought that meant that Jets, Cars, and Trucks could use the road. I have no idea why. It was years later i realized it was abbreviation for junction. I still say to myself "Jet Car Truck" when I see the JCT sign.

When I was little and about to fall asleep and the windows of my bedroom were open I would hear the "end of the day" noise. I believed this was just a sound the world made when the sun had set or almost set and it was time to go to bed because I heard it every night. Much later I realized it was the sound of trucks and cars passing on a highway not far from our house.

one night, when i was 4 or 5, i heard sirens and went to my dad to ask what they were, i thought he said "they're simon" so for a while after that everytime i heard sirens, i'd think "there's simon, he's kinda scary"

When I was around 3 years old, I moved to a new house. I didn't realize that the people in the house we were buying had put their house up for sale, so I thought you could just go to any house you wanted and buy it. I thought we were kicking the people who lived there before us out... and for a long time after I was worried someone would just come up out of the blue and kick us out because they wanted our house.

when i was 4 my father told me that automatic doors didn't open without first chanting 'open please, magic doors' a beleif which i embarassingly held until i was at least 10!

When I was eight, I used to think that a lady who lived a few doors down from my Grandma was insane.

Grandma lives in this apartment building only for old people. It had eleven floors and Grandmda lived in apartment 901, so you can guess how huge it was, especially to an eight-year-old

Anyway, this lady would crank up her TV really loud, and whenever you would go past her door, you could hear her screaming stuff. Sometimes, you could hear her screaming stuff at Bob Barker early in the morning.

One time, I was messing around the house while Grandma was cooking dinner. Since Cabin Fever was settling in, she told me to "entertain myself". Since Grandma was sixty-something, there wasn't much to do that was exactly thrilling. So, I decided to stare out of the little peephole in Grandma's door. After staring for several minutes, I was horrified when I saw this old lady coming down the hall way, staring into all of the peepholes. Needless to say, Grandma had a hard time convincing me to unlock the bathroom door and come out.

I used to believe that if you wanted to move to another house, you had to find someone who would be willing to trade houses with you. And whoever was going to be moving into the better house, would have to give the other homeowner one dollar (I was very young, so I thought one dollar was a LOT of money!).

When I was little, there was a street light which didnt light up properly and made a buzzing noise. I used to think it was going to blow up. I used to run past it as quickly as poss, terrified.

I used to believe that that drainage ditches (common in our neighborhood) on the sides of the roads, the 4 or 5 ft long kind and the slope that is next to them would cause you to fall into them if you got too close, and that alligators would eat you once you were in. In walking past them I would steer clear of getting too close. Even though the opening is no greater than 6 or 8inches I thought you could still fall through them, even sitting on them was a scary thing!

I used to think that if you walked on a sewer manhole cover and jumped on it, the lid would fall and you would fall in the dirty sewer. I was always afraid to walk on manhole covers because of this.

when walking down a quiet road & a car came along - if I didn't reach the next lamppost before the car, then something terrible would happen. This continued into early adult life.